Design of an automated system for imaging and
sorting soil mesofauna

Abstract:

Identification and population counts of soil mesofauna can be an
important tool for soil ecologists to determine the soil biodiversity. Information
provided from population counts can give insight to soil ecologists about the
effects of human land use, monitoring soil and water health, benefits of soil
biodiversity in agriculture, and the impact of global climate change. The
process of performing population counts, which includes classifying and
sorting specimens, is very time consuming because of the large diversity and
quantities of specimens in soil samples. A mechanical system was designed
and developed to automate this process. The system features automated
imaging, a pair of linear stages for automated positioning, and a six-axis robot
with a pipette end effector for sorting. Images acquired with the system will be
used by pattern recognition software to classify specimens from a soil sample.
The final system was successful in creating high quality images of 19 species
of soil mesofauna and sorting them.